A rant on the lack of courtesy and manners in today’s society!
I sometimes wonder if everyone today has been a student at The Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert School of Public Behavior and Manners. It seems so, I thought with bitter disgust as, a while back, my nose was thoroughly rubbed in the execrable manners of the holier-than-thou set.
At the time, I was limping pretty badly on an injured knee; using a cane if I had to walk any distance at all. That afternoon, planning to order hard print enlargements of a special photo, I made the long, slow trek from the parking lot of the Super Evil Bigmart to the photo department far at the back of the store.
Unfortunately, when I limped into the area, I discovered that a large family group had co-opted most of the photo department. There were four specialized computers in the area, accompanied by chairs; the family had moved all four chairs to a single computer, not only blocking access to two of the PCs, but making it impossible for anyone using them to be seated. A teenager, bored and scrolling through her phone, stood behind the group; the rest of the gathering perched on their chairs surrounding one confused woman, advising her.
I knew from previous experience that the one accessible computer was glitchy, so I decided to try my luck with the machines at the far end. I limped in a wide half-circle around the conglomeration, skirting the teenager with a “Pardon me, please”. She didn’t look up from her phone or bother to step aside. (And, yes, I considered “accidentally” whacking her in the ankle with my cane, but decorum prevailed.)
Sadly, I discovered that both machines at the far end were out of order. Sighing, I limped back to the cantankerous PC, only to find it was now blocked by an additional person who had wandered over and was debating with the others about how best to complete their problematical order. I approached, again saying, “Pardon me. Pardon me, please”, assuming that my presence would be recognized by someone, anyone, in the group, but was ignored. Now, as an older woman, I’m quite accustomed to being invisible, but I was getting fed up. “EXCUSE ME!” I barked in the voice of a drill sergeant addressing new recruits; then snarled at their startled faces, pointing. “Those machines aren’t working! I need this one! Would you please move!” The large man blocking the PC finally noticed me and stepped aside.
None of the crowd (all of them, except for the woman working at the computer, obviously younger than I) offered me a chair—not that I’d expected them to, but it would have been a courteous gesture, I thought sourly. Leaning on my cane, I tried to upload my photos.
This machine, though, was the glitchy PC. When it finally accepted a connection to my phone, it boomeranged back from my photo files to the initial processing screen, not once, but twice. The third time it did so, I, frustrated, muttered, not quite sotto voce, “Dammit!”
It was at this point that the woman working at the crowded computer snapped, “I don’t think we need to hear THAT!”
I stared at her in astonishment. There I stood, leaning on my cane, as younger, able-bodied people first co-opted all the chairs, made me circle them twice to get to a semi-working PC, ignored me rather than stepping aside, and did not even offer me a seat despite my obvious need for one. Clenching my cane in a white-knuckled fist, I glared pointedly around at the seated group.
The complaining woman blinked first. She dropped her eyes back to her own screen. After a few minutes I finished my print order, clutched my receipt, and stormed away.
Reviewing this incident later, I thought back to my childhood: the scoldings I endured, the fingers shaken in my face, being sent to my room when my manners failed the exacting standards set by my parents, teachers, and grandparents. In the light of those memories, I acknowledged that, yes, the holier-than-thou set probably found distasteful my frustrated exclamation of a single, very minor swearword in public.
Nonetheless, I still maintain that my utterance of one mild little “Dammit!” was, under the circumstances, far less a display of bad manners than (and a damn mild reaction to) the boorish behavior displayed by the group at the other computer.
If only I had looked at them and snapped, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!”
Speaking to the Heart of Many Matters 
While the “Frankly my dear…” come back would have been good, a better come back would have been, “Well how about a ‘F**k you’?” combined with any appropriate gesture you could have managed (the finger swipe under the chin, the right hand to the left elbow while raising the left elbow up, and the always understood middle finger).
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